FLDS in Canada may face arrests soon

Unlike the raided compound in Eldorado, Texas, with its walls and locked gate, Bountiful is unmarked and open. The region is dotted with lush orchards swarming this spring with pollinating bees. Pheasant, ducks and deer — at odd times, even a herd of caribou or grazing elk — meander by.

A rolling road through forests and farms leads to a single traffic sign, a curled white arrow that in Canada means a dead-end street. But this road continues into Bountiful — a collection of large, mostly unfinished homes that look down on creeks littered with broken buckets, bent bicycle rims and plastic bags. The creeks wind through a neighborhood of smaller, poorly kept homes with broken windows, broken siding and broken stairs.

Children bounce on trampolines, toddlers dash down footpaths. Three women in matching, limb-covering pink dresses push double strollers along the hardpacked dirt roads, their hems and boots splashed with mud.

Emmett Blackmore, 11, waves from a unicycle. "I'm just learning!" he laughs. Pedaling away, he startles a wild turkey.

Minutes later, two vans driven by women block the only road out of town. A man, who does not give his name, approaches and peers into the AP representatives' rental car.

"Do you have a boy in there?" he asks. "I'm told you were talking to a child back there."

He looks into the car, empty but for two occupants and some photography equipment.

Later, John Kettle, the local administrative district director, said the "naive" community is "under siege."

"It's like the 1950s here. It's a time warp of niceness. People are genuine. It's the best kept secret in North America," he said.

Church doctrine touting plural marriage and a communal lifestyle stems from early Mormon theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That church, however, abandoned polygamy in 1890 and rejects any link to fundamentalists who continue the practice.

Then came the second divide. While Jeffs' followers stick to fundamentalist practices, Blackmore has liberalized his family and followers, discouraging forced marriages and young brides; he no longer requires women to wear specific dresses but urges them, instead, to dress conservatively. Some of his children even attend schools outside Bountiful, in the nearby community.

Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School is for Jeffs' followers; about 200 yards down a grassy hill, Mormon Hills School is for Blackmore's people. Together, the schools receive about $600,000 in public funds each year.

Residents receive fire, paramedic and police support from Creston, a city of 5,000 about 10 miles to the north. Health care is provided under the government's national program. Residents see doctors at nearby hospitals; babies are often born in an onsite midwife clinic.